The Babysitter: My Summers with a Serial Killer. Author talk & Signing

Growing up on Cape Cod in the 1960s, Liza Rodman was a lonely little girl. During the summers,

while her mother worked days in a local motel and danced most nights in the Provincetown bars,

her babysitter—the kind, handsome handyman at the motel where her mother worked—took her

and her sister on adventures in his truck. He bought them popsicles and together, they visited his

“secret garden” in the Truro woods. To Liza, he was one of the few kind, understanding, and safe

adults in her life.

But there was one thing she didn’t know; their babysitter was a serial killer.

Though Tony Costa’s gruesome case made screaming headlines in 1969 and beyond, Liza never

made the connection between her friendly babysitter and the infamous killer of numerous

women, including four in Massachusetts, until decades later.

Haunted by nightmares and horrified by what she learned, Liza became obsessed with the case.

Now, she and cowriter Jennifer Jordan reveal “a suspenseful portrayal of murderous madness

in tandem with a child’s growing loneliness, neglect, and despair, a narrative collision that will

haunt” (Sarah Weinman, author of The Real Lolita) you long after you finish it.

Join Liza and Jennifer for a reading, conversation and signing of the recently released paperback version of their gripping true crime memoir.